Washington - US weapons are fueling Mexico's drug violence in a deadly trade of drug money for arms, according to a report released Thursday by the US government. Prepared by the investigative arm of the US Congress, the report placed much of the blame on failed coordination between US agencies and on lax regulation of gun sales in the United States.
Eliot Engel, chairman of the US
House of Representatives foreign affairs subcommittee on the western hemisphere, noted the shortcomings in a statement released ahead of the hearings, which were scheduled for Thursday but postponed.
"Current restrictions on collecting and reporting information on firearms purchases not only make the
jobs of our fine police offices more difficult than they already are, but also inhibit our ability to effectively curb firearms trafficking to Mexico," Engel said.
Researchers found that 87 per cent of firearms seized and traced by Mexican authorities in the last five years originated in the United States, Congress' Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported.
The report cited figures from the US Justice Department's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). It also drew on interviews with Mexican and US government and
justice officials.
"These firearms have been increasingly more powerful and lethal in recent years," the report said. "Many of these firearms come from gun shops and gun shows in south-west border states."
Mexico has become the epicentre of Latin America's drug trade, with heavily armed gangs battling over the lucrative trafficking of narcotics into the US.
Drug-related slayings in
Mexico reached 3,002 since January, a rise of 76.5 per cent from the same period last year, according to a count published Thursday by the Mexican daily El Universal.
Most of the trafficked guns are purchased with the proceeds of drug sales in the US. Earlier this year, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton acknowledged that the
United States must do its part in quashing the demand for the illicit drugs that fuels the violence.
The GAO said it could not determine how many firearms are smuggled into Mexico in any given year.
In addition to faulting weak coordination among US enforcement agencies, the GAO report said that US law enforcement assistance to Mexico, which has mostly been concentrated on the drug war, has until now failed to specifically target arms trafficking, though that is improving under new US President Barack Obama.
Other barriers to halting the deadly trade come from the Mexican side. The report cited government corruption in Mexico and incomplete use of the ATF's electronic firearms tracing system.
The report said that while Mexico has launched anti-corruption initiatives, Mexican officials "acknowledge fully implementing these reforms will take considerable time," possibly years for "comprehensive change."
